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Topic: Hand Kneaded Dough (Read 2640 times)

This pie was hand kneaded. Although I have a lot of practice handling wet dough, it's the first time I've tried to hand knead in at least 5 years.

I started in bowl with 75% of the Flour (KA Bread), the salt, water, poolish and a pinch of IDY. I did a 12 minute autolyse, 6 minute hand mix with a spoon, adding flour along the way and 15 minute post mix rest. Then I hand kneaded for 1 minute. Did another 5 minute rest (It didn't feel smooth, so I wanted to rest it again), then another 30 second hand knead, then shape. I'm guessing it was a 65-66% hydration. I know that is very high for a hand kneaded dough and it takes some practice. But it didn't stick to my hands at all because I've gotten used to how to handle high hydration doughs. The trick is to keep the outside dry with just the thinnest coating of flour. Actually, I only keep the side near my hands coated, the other side is wet. Then I pull the dough expanding the dry side and close it in towards the wet side. I guess it's hard to explain.

I did a 13 hour cold rise, and a 7 hour counter rise. Baked for 1:40. The cheese, unfortunately, was polly-o dry mozz, as the whole foods 'fresh' cheese was a disgrace and I was desparate. The taste was excellent, but I could still tell that it needed more time to ferment. I have another dough out of the batch that I will bake tomorrow or the next day.

It was not my best crust, but it was the best photos. For some reason my cornice always looks flat in my photos. I've got really crappy photo skills, which I'm working on a bit lately. The dough was excellent though. It was not as tasty as a longer rise.

I was surprised at how good it came out in consideration of how easy it seemed. It made me think of all those years fighting with machines, not realizing what was possible without them. But, of course, I tried by hand back then and it was as bad as my machine ones were at that time. I'll tell ya, wet mix is the best thing since sliced pizza.

> I am curious if you like the hand kneaded texture as much as I do.I don't think it was really any different than my normal process. I'm going to try it with all caputo next time I do a hand knead. But my next tests are going to be with lower temps. I want to scale back to a 4 minute pie. These pies are 1:40, and they are just too soft for me. Something wierd is happening lately with my dough. It seems to be cooking faster, even though my oven is not hotter. That 1:40 pie went into the oven when it was just 780F and even intentionally cooling the oven down to 690F, the last pie (not shown) baked in 2:50. I'm not sure what is going on exactly. I'm going to cool it down more and try for a 4 or 4:30 pie next time.

Jeff, I have had the exact same thing happen from time to time... a batch that cooks really fast. For a long time I wondered if it was just my oven being extra hot. My oven really takes a long time to recover from any openings so I rarely actually take the time to use my thermometer. I mainly use my thermometer to find a spot in the house that is the optimum temperature for fermentation. Now that I have read your post I am not so sure it was the oven that sped these pizzas along. Especially thinking back about how a number of the times I noticed the fast acting dough I was throwing pizza parties and had the oven door open frequently. I suspect it has something to do with a magic spot in the fermentation window or else the starter. Every time I noticed this phenomenon it was with a starter dough. I am still amazed at the subtleties you can achieve by how you refresh your starter before use, and as someone who bakes with only starter or only IDY I can definitely tell you that the starter can go through some pretty serious changes in how it effects the dough.

very interesting. I often make dough when my starter is less than 100% at it's peak. It's just hard to time and I'm busy, etc. This particular time it was 100% at it's peak. It was also drier, not my usual 50/50 poolish, but slightly more doughy. It was also a much shorter rise than usual. So there were definite differences. I wouldn't think these would effect the actual bake time - you'd think it's got mostly to do with temp. but maybe.

Jeff, I had exactly the same outcome as you on Tuesday night.I washed my starter ages ago and I was having problems with it recovering.I usually only use KABF to feed it ,but I had ran out of it and changed to Caputo,so I don't know if that was the issue?Anyhow I went back to feeding with the KA again and it suddenly reacted.Not in any big manner (actually much different than before?),but it was alive and kicking. It rose much less,but had a stronger scent of Alcohol than ever before.It appeared thicker also,though I think my feedings were the same volume.I did have to change my container to a larger one also, so that may have impacted the results due to the added room for the beasts to breath!Believe it or not since joining this forum i've never made pizza without a ntural starter.It's painful sometimes and I have to pull ot a frozen Pot Pie at the last minute for dinner more times than i'ld like to admit!Well I used my starter at its peak and it gave me one of my best results to date.There are just so many variables in this endeavour it never ceases to amaze me.I agree with Scott,your crust looks the best yet to me, David

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